Just the other week we brought you news of Ovi mail coming to more than 35 of their Series 40 mobile phones, now the beta has been rolled out worldwide.
According to Nokia more than 110 million of their mobile phones can now have their own Ovi email addresses and accounts, with simple easy access and direct setup from the handset.
These free email accounts do not need a PC to be involved in what-so-ever but do offer the same functionality of one, as they mirror the likes of Gmail and their ilk. We also brought you news of this from Nokia World, which will be great venture for emerging markets on S40 mobiles.
Over the beta trial users in 12 countries, or languages based on those regions will be able to take part in the initial run. These range from English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Hindi, Bengali, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia.
The latter of which just screams it’s ripe for those markets we mentioned earlier, we firmly believe.
They’ve already been running this trial since November to great success in India, Malaysia and the Philippines.
More phones have been scheduled by Nokia for those types of countries, which we also brought you news on of late – seen here.
With over 75-percent of the world’s population having never used email, it’s a great way to reach them.
We’ve also just seen the 3D landmarks feature update over the air too, from web client too series 60 handset.
We’ve just seen a live demo of a favourite location being added to Ovi maps, where a local is added on the web version then updated over the air to a series 60 device.
Here’s the proof.
From their 14th Nokia World event comes the announcement of Ovi messaging now supporting more email and IM clients than ever before. Hurrah!
They’ve finally got the message, received the signal, opened the missive – you get where we’re going with this – with the inclusion of the most frequently used mailing and messaging solutions around.
Over are the dark days where two polystyrene cups and a length of string is the best way to keep in contact with Nokia handsets.
Now they’ve listened to their people, taken heed at the requests and have brought to them a more solid foundation for messaging.
This new Ovi update surrounds getting email and messaging on their handsets, under the title ‘Nokia Messaging’.
Where there’s now integration with said platform for Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail and AOL mail to name but a few.
On top of that, as if that wasn’t enough, they’ve also introduced the inclusion of their IM counterparts
too. With the expected suspects of Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger now all onboard.
There’s support too from what Nokia are quoting as thousands of ISPs around the world. We expect all of the above comes from the purchase of Oz communications a few months back. Who had a solid foundation in all of this and it just seems natural it’s now a part of Nokia
All this is accessible from their new online portal for Mail on Ovi with its now 1GB storage ceiling, offering up a single sign-in to accessing and creating Ovi email accounts.
Arriving globally this month in 12 languages, the beta is set to take on Series 40 devices first with others being around the corner. Although the web version sadly won’t be around until February 2009.
As for their Nokia Messaging platform, it’ll be launched first quarter of next year. With owners of N71 and N95 first having access to a trial of their push email services here from today.
This has been designed to support easy access and set up for mobile email, for better integration all their accounts. From how it was outlaid to us, it’s a simple process with no trauma at all.
In a reverse take on the new offering Ovi, this will be available for S60 devices with Series 40 coming along in the second half of 2009.
This does all seem to be gearing towards offering up Blackberry-esque services to all, without the premium on top.
Last week I took a first look at Nokia Maps, the final (launched) part of the Ovi suite I have been reviewing recently. I had, in error, started out using the Maps 2.0 beta not realising the main Nokia site was still linking the original version 1 release… so as a favour Nokia launched it officially this week and saved me the effort of re-visiting the earlier release.
It is, however, a vast improvement over the earlier version – visually more polished with a better interface than the original. It also operates notably more quickly in nearly every respect than the first release which could be sluggish, particularly in scrolling around the maps. It’s now ‘acceptable’ although not brilliantly fast… still work to be done in that area I think. Although one of the most annoying lags – the time taken to update your position on a map – feels much better: one change that makes a big difference. The new application is stable too – after one worrying crash on the first time I ran it on the loaned N82 I was testing it on, it didn’t set a foot wrong on subsequent occasions.
Capability-wise the applications retains a similar feature set – road, satellite and hybrid views of a huge number of countries around the world with both vehicle and walking routing available to buy in yearly, 90-day and 30-day increments in local currency. City guides are also available as a pay-for add-on. There’s also an impressive range of ‘points of interest’ which can be displayed overlaying the maps…
Notable additions in this release though are:
A 3D map display, mimicking the ‘road-ahead’ view dedicated devices like TomTom’s devices provide. This feels a more natural way to view maps when on the move, but when I tested it (admittedly only with walking-speed movement) it retained the standard ‘north up’ orientation – not much use when travelling south. This can be changed manually, but really should track automatically without the need for routing license to be purchased and in-use.
More map and building detail in major built-up areas now gives a better indication of surroundings – particularly useful for navigation on foot when they form a useful point of reference.
Traffic information is coming for Europe soon. There’s nothing available for the UK yet, but it’s a promising capability and shows a commitment to developing the product over future releases.
A screenshot feature is a a further simple addition but makes it possible to share map data or your current location via e-mail or MMS.
Paired with a GPS-capable handset such as the N82 with a warm-standby start-up time of only a few seconds Maps is quickly up and running and often able to receive a GPS signal inside buildings or vehicles. However, there is also a network-based location sensing service (similar to that employed by Google Maps) which offers locations with an accuracy that varies depending on the number of network transmitters in the vicinity – in central London that gives positioning accuracy of a few hundred meters.
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So is it any good? Yes.
When talking about mapping it’s impossible to avoid comparisons with Google Maps and in many respects Google’s offering is quicker and (unsurprisingly) better at searching for locations by name. But the routing and city-guide additions put the Nokia product in a different class – particularly when dealing with ‘points of interest’ which Nokia categorise and identify individually, where Google has no equivalent. Obviously there are some areas for improvement – greater flexibility in the periods routing can be purchased for would be nice, the interface is still laggy at times and the searching feature presents too many options for simple searches, but these are minor criticisms. Coupled with the upcoming web portal and ’social features’ Maps feels like a competent product maturing quickly.
Notes: I was reviewing Nokia Maps for S60, but versions for S40 (still version 1) are also available. It works well with internal GPS units built into advanced handsets, but I also used an external unit which worked just as well and didn’t appear to have an adverse effect on the battery over the internal unit.
Nokia’s Ovi platform has wooed another operator: Orange announced yesterday that it’s struck a new three-year strategic agreement with the handset maker that will see Orange run ten Nokia handsets as part of its Signature range as well as selling Ovi services.
The ten Signature handsets will give users access to the Orange Music Store, both Orange and NGage games, as well as Nokia Maps, through Orange’s traditional user interface. It looks like the companies are betting big on maps in particular: the pair say: the Nokia “Mobile Maps platform and GPS technology will be introduced to a wide portfolio of Nokia handsets in the Orange Signature range” with a view to signing up 10 million users before 2010.
It’s looking pretty good for Nokia’s Ovi right now: getting 10 million maps users from Orange alone is not to be sniffed at (although for a company with one third of the world’s phones, you’d hope they’ve got some bigger targets in mind). But there’s another reason for Nokia to be pleased with itself: Orange’s Signature devices have always been, by and large, Windows Mobile handsets.
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